ISLAMABAD, Nov 16: The People’s Party Parliamentarians and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, despite a clear shift of balance in favour of Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam), are still engaged in dialogue to explore the possibility of fielding joint candidates for the National Assembly’s speaker and deputy speaker to be elected on Tuesday.

PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim and MMA’s prime ministerial candidate Maulana Fazlur Rehman were expected to meet late on Saturday night to pick up the threads of their negotiations where they had left them in Nawabshah two days ago.

“We are mainly in touch with Maulana Fazlur Rehman,” said a PPP member requesting anonymity.

He said Jamaat-i-Islami, whose Naib Amir Liaquat Baloch was nominated for the prestigious slot of speaker, was not ready to open the issue.

However, the PPP at its meeting on Saturday evening held a secret ballot to choose any one of them for being nominated as the party’s candidate for speaker.

The talks going on with the MMA also came under discussion at the meeting. Women members of the party exhorted others that the understanding with the MMA should be specific to constitutional issues and the party should not compromise on women’s issues.

The women members were also perturbed over the segregation of women’s desks seen in the National Assembly’s inaugural session on Saturday. They told party leadership that they would not sit separately on seats allocated to women elected on special seats.

However, the MMA has already asked the National Assembly secretariat to allocate separate seats to their women.

Another PPP member said that although his party had sharp ideological differences with MMA parties, it should consider an “enemy’s enemy as a friend”.

If the party played its cards well it could have snatched the prime ministerial slot from the PML-Q grasp, he said. Still the party could create serious problems for Gen Musharraf by joining hands with the MMA, he added.